The Tiki Pirates
by RawrRory
Summary: This story is not about me – no, I'm just the supporting character. A normal person amidst these monsters I've come to call my crew members. A person swept up in the wind created by my captain, Tiki D. Rollo and the countless oddities we've picked up along the way towards his ultimate goal: Finding the vanished Pirate King Luffy and his Crew of the Best. / Rated T for now.
1. Introduction

**Two Years Ago**

_Five silhouettes stood, facing the bright orange flames that had consumed their entire house. The night was warm and humid, and the burning building only added to the heat. Everything was silent except for the creaks and pops of their old residence as it slowly destabilized and became a charred pile of timber. None of the five siblings – not even the youngest who was only a four year old boy – said a word as they watched their home turn into a pillar of flame. No tears were shed, and no looks of fear or sadness could be seen on any faces._

_A few wooden crates and drawstring sacks littered the ground by the two eldest's feet – the only things the siblings had wanted to salvage before lighting their own house on fire._

_Yes, the flames that were currently working to turn their prey into nothing but smoldering embers and ash had been purposefully set by those five motionless silhouettes. That house had long since stopped being a home for the five, and tonight they'd finally unbound themselves from what had become their prison._

"_Bu-bye house…Bu-bye dad," the youngest and shortest silhouette said with a small, childish wave of his pudgy hand._

_The young girl beside him gently took his small hand in hers – which wasn't much bigger – and consoled, "Don't worry Tano. We'll be alright now." She gave the small hand a comforting squeeze and turned to the other three figures behind her, "Shouldn't we leave now? Someone's bound to notice the smoke soon."_

"_No," the shortest of the three others spoke bitterly, "No one will come. Even if they do notice, they'd let this place burn to the ground before coming to see what happened."_

_The younger sister pursed her lips, "Well, I think we should still leave. The longer we wait, the more miserable we're gonna be trying to set up camp for the night – and we still don't know where we're going to stay."_

_The elder and taller two of the five siblings stayed silent, both sets of matching green eyes watching the fire devour the house they've left behind. These two were twins – a girl and a boy. The girl was the oldest by about twenty seconds or so. They were identical in stature only, for both their personalities and faces were drastically different – except for the clear green eyes which they both inherited from their missing mother. The older girl stood stiffly with her hands placed firmly on her narrow hips, while her twin brother had his hands clasped and tucked under his chin as he stood with a slight hunch in his posture. His long sandy-blonde hair was pulled into a ponytail at the nape of his neck with a few stray strands falling to the sides of his face._

"_We could camp out at our old fort in the forest," the middle brother suggested since the others were still lost in watching the flames._

"_No, Trey," his younger sister complained lightly, "There'll be bugs there…"_

"_You'll be fine, Cana," the middle sibling, Trey, replied. He turned to his older sister and brother, "Should we start heading for the fort?"_

_When he didn't get a reply he asked lightly, "Una? Ket? Should we head to the fort?"_

_The eldest girl seemed to fall out of her trance and looked down at her little brothers and sister. She gave a slight nod and let her eyes flicker towards the few crates and bags on the ground around them._

"_Alright," Trey sighed, "Cana, take one of the smaller sacks and keep an eye on Tano."_

_The younger sister, Cana gave a slight nod and after pulling one of the lighter drawstring sacks onto her back she pulled the littlest boy along to the east where a dark patch of forest sprouted from a flatland of dirt which their house had been built in the midst of. "Come on Ta-ki – we're gonna go to the play fort tonight."_

_The young boy smiled, "Camping!" He started skipping towards the distant forest, leaving Cana to try and chase after him with the sack hanging awkwardly on her back._

_Trey looked between the twins Una and Ket and then slung a different sack onto his back. He also picked up one of the heavier crates and started trudging off after his two younger siblings._

_Only the twins' matching silhouettes were left in front of the house set ablaze._

_Una, the eldest sister sent a silent look towards her brother._

_He wasn't looking at her, but he must have sensed her looking at him because he replied, "Go on ahead…I'll take the last of the stuff over when I'm ready."_

_Una kept staring at him. Not a word left her mouth, but that didn't stop her twin from understanding her nonverbal question._

"_I just need to make sure…" he said with a soft waver in his stoic voice, "I need to make sure that he doesn't come back."_

_A flash of anger and regret swept across Una's fire-lit face, but she still didn't say anything. She let her eyes slowly come to a close before she nodded and picked up the last drawstring sack and situated a crate on her hip. She gave a last look at her brother but it was hidden by shadow, and soon she was walking off in the same direction as the others, towards the woods._

_Ket stared at the flames, trying to burn them into his memory._

_From that night on they would start over – but each of them knew that the damage had already been done. They might have been able to burn their house, but their memories wouldn't be lost quite so easily._


	2. Chapter 1

**Chapter 1**

My body ached with fire as I swam for shore. No matter how cold the water was, the fire wouldn't extinguish. The pain all over my body, the constant salty taste in my mouth from the assaulting waves, the cold pressure of the ocean on my skin – everything came out to misery. Add to that the fact that my father's boat had just been stolen out from under me, and I was having a pretty bang-up day.

If my mouth wasn't full of salty ocean, it would be filled with curses. I'd been on one of my routine trips to Boone South when one of the passengers I'd taken on for a little extra beri hit me over the head and threw me overboard – I was a transporter who took merchants and their goods from island to island all over the South Blue. Luckily I hadn't been unconscious or else I would have drowned right then and there…but I was just alive enough to dog paddle and watch as that thief sailed away with my ship and all the supplies I'd been transporting.

I finally noticed the blurry line of shore up in the distance, but it was still so far away. My heart sank, and I would have let out an exhausted cry if I wasn't so worried about swallowing anymore of the bitter ocean. I felt my muscles burning down to the very bone – and seeing the good mile of ocean that separated me from the island of Boone South made my body hurt even more.

I let my legs float up to the surface of the choppy water and leaned backwards so that I could float flat on my back. It felt great to not have to move my aching arms and legs anymore, and decided I'd let myself float awhile before starting back up. The early spring sun beat down on me, shining red through my closed eyelids and warming the parts of my body that were above the water line as I floated.

_With my body in this condition, it doesn't seem like I'll ever make it to shore_, I thought vacantly. Dying seemed like a very likely possibility – at least more probable than swimming a mile or so further to shore with my arms and legs already in so much pain.

"Well," I sighed after spitting out more water, "What's it going to be? Will I drown first, or be eaten by a Sea King?" I'd always heard that drowning was just like falling asleep – but I bet the burning suffocation in your chest as you tried to breathe in salt water wasn't too pleasant. Maybe being a mid-morning snack for a Sea King would be quicker…

My thoughts of death were suddenly interrupted by a voice.

"Oi!" the voice shouted, slightly distorted by the water that had filled my ears, "Are ya' dead?" As I lifted my head a bit to empty my ears of the invading sea water I could hear the sounds of frantic paddling coming from the same direction as the voice.

I jerked out of my floating position and looked around. "Unless you're a hungry Sea King, then no," I answered while spitting out amounts of sea water that flooded into my mouth between words. Relief and hope came back to my insides, making the twenty foot or so swim to the little wooden dingy seem like nothing even with my aching arms and legs.

"I am kinda hungry, but not a Sea King," the boyish voice laughed. As I swam for the little row boat, I caught a glimpse of my savior, the owner of the voice. It was a guy somewhere close to my ripe old age of 19. He was thin and wiry, using his leanly muscled arms to paddle his little dingy towards me. The tiny boat was battered and beaten, and so was he – though a wide, dimpled smile on his face did a good job of covering it up.

I swam desperately forward and quickly latched an arm over the side of my savior's boat once it was within reach.

"So whatcha doin' out here?" he asked as he looked down at me in curiosity. His hazel eyes seemed to shine despite being shadowed from the sun by the brim of an old-looking straw hat with a frayed red band around its base.

"Floating," I answered with a soft pant, "If you hadn't come along I probably wouldn't have lived much longer.

The boy laughed again, though I didn't see what was particularly funny about the situation. "Sorry then," he said with an apologetic smile, "I guess ya' aren't too lucky today."

I was about to ask what he meant when I pulled myself over the side of the boat. I landed on the floor of the dingy with a splash and a thud – leaving water for more water. I looked down at the few inches of ocean that had seeped into the dingy, and quickly spotted the source of the problem. There was a hole in the bottom of the boat, stoppered with a wadded up rag and reinforced by the boy's big toe, which he had stuck into the hole along with the rag.

"No…" I groaned.

The boy laughed again, "Yep – we're sinking."

I ran a pruney hand through my damp hair, "You've got to be kidding me!"

"Nope, but we're pretty close to that island over there. Maybe if we paddle really hard we can make it there before we sink," he reasoned, eyeing the stretch of murky, blue ocean between us and dry land.

I groaned again and leaned over the side of the boat opposite of the boy, my so-called savior. We both started paddling furiously, me with more morose thoughts of death on my mind and the boy with a dimpled grin stretched over his face.

At least one of us was enjoying ourselves…

The boat just kept getting heavier, and harder to move as the water level rose. The cloth plug and the boy's toe just wasn't enough to keep the water out, and there was nothing sturdier in the boat to take its place.

We hadn't gotten much closer to land when I suddenly sat up straight and nested my hands atop my head. "This is just wasting our energy," I reasoned, "We should use this time to rest up our muscles and then just swim for land and hope for the best."

The boy sat up as well and anxiously scratched at the back of his neck, "Well…that's a good plan an' all, but it's kinda impossible for me…"

I raised an eyebrow at the hatted boy, "What? – you can't swim or something?"

He smiled sheepishly, "Something like that…"

I frowned to myself, "Great…I'm still too tired from swimming before to make it to shore – let alone with you on my back."

We were silent for a moment – I was once again letting my thoughts spiral into negativity – but the silence was short-lived as the boy suddenly stood up on the raised bench he'd been sitting on. As that meant he had to pull his toe out of the boat's hole, the dingy started to fill with water at a disturbingly fast pace.

He stuck his arm out straight in the direction of land and stuck his thumb straight up. He closed one eye and stared very seriously at his upturned digit, as if he were calculating something. He must have figured out whatever it was that he contemplating because he just as suddenly jumped with a splash to the floor of the sinking boat.

"Alright then – we'll just have to go with plan E," He said seriously as he yanked his hat down as far as it would go to secure it in place atop his head.

"Plan E?" I asked warily, "What about B through D?"

"They've all failed," he said simply, "This one probably will too so you better hope your luck starts to turn around."

"What?!"

But as soon as the word left my mouth, the boy thrust his hands downward. The exact moment his elbows locked into a straight position and his palms flattened out, something like an explosion went off beneath us and we were thrown into the air. The boat had blown to pieces – its' scraps flying through the air with us. We were both screaming, though his screams were ones of enjoyment like when you ride a roller-coaster at an amusement park whereas mine were of a more terrified kind.

In all my contemplations of how I was going to die that day, I've got to say, falling to my death had not been on the list.

We were soaring upward and at the same time towards land as if being propelled by the air itself. The wind roared past my ears and flattened my water-heavy clothes against my numb body. We were already halfway to the island. I looked around for the boy, who at this point had lost his title of "savior", and found him just a little ways behind me. He was looking around at everything with that dimpled smile stretched across his mouth – and when he met my (confused, scared shitless, amazed – any of those adjectives would work here) stare he gave a little wave, as if he wasn't in the same life-threatening ordeal as I was.

Something turned in my stomach, and as I looked back down, I could see the island of Boone South growing larger. It was getting closer in a very fast way. We'd finally reached the highest point of our flight and started on our arc downward.

I groaned and clenched my eyes shut. I was beginning to regret not getting eaten by a Sea King. At least that would have spared me all this girlish screaming and a messy death. There were going to be bits of me splattered in quite a large radius…

Boone South kept expanding beneath us. I tried to keep my eyes closed, but the thought of not seeing the ground as I advanced upon it was scarier. At least this way I would know the exact place where my body had perished should I ever decide to haunt my place of death in the afterlife.

My body balled itself up on instinct as the hard ground came closer. I had all but forgotten my not-savior when he suddenly grabbed onto me, wrapping his scrawny legs around my middle. I gave him another glance, but he wasn't paying me any attention. He was staring at the ground, his serious face settled back into his hat-shadowed brow and his arms pushed out straight ahead of us.

Dry land was directly over us now, meaning we were just about to go splat.

I started counting the seconds of life I had left.

I got to ten before the oncoming ground was too close for my terrified brain to function correctly.

Then there was suddenly a horrible burst of wind pushing against my body and the impact of the ground.

Only there was no splat.

I landed on my stomach and the boy landed next to me. Both of us hit the hard-packed earth with a _fwump_ rather than a _splack_. My eyes had clenched so tightly that I had to practically pry them open with my fingers.

I was lying flat on the ground, on a dirt road amidst scraps of the shattered dinghy. The fall hadn't even winded me…

"What…how the hell…?" I looked around in disbelief. "How am I not a pancake right now?" I turned to the boy for some sort of answer.

He whistled, "I can't believe that actually worked." He gave a small slightly proud laugh, "Pretty good for not knowing what I was doing."

I flipped myself over and sat up, my legs still to numb with fear and muscle-strain to actually stand up. I could do nothing but stare at the boy.

My heart still hadn't restarted. I was frozen now to the sun-warmed earth I was sitting on. For such a warm spring day, my insides felt like ice. I managed to look down at myself, and saw that besides still being partly damp from my elongated soak in the ocean, I looked no closer to death than on a normal day. I didn't feel that way with my numbed muscles that would soon start to scream in pain, but I looked completely fine.

"What are you?" I asked, as I turned my head to look at the strange person beside me.

"Rollo – Tiki D. Rollo…hmm, I guess I haven't thought about the what, just yet. I don't know the exact name of the fruit but I've been calling myself a Wind-Man. I think "Kaki" would work too, but "Kaze" just sounds cooler ya' know?" he gave me another dimpled smile and mirrored my sitting position. He pulled the hat from his head and set it in his lap so he could run one of his pruney hands through his head of thick brown hair that had taken the shape of his hat in a comical way: the majority of his hair flattened into a half-dome shape around his skull that was laced with the up-curled edges of his locks.

"So you ate a Devil Fruit?" This explained why swimming hadn't been an option.

He nodded and after tugging on the up-curled tufts of hair a bit, he pulled his weathered straw hat back down into its usual place. "Looked like some sorta banana, only it was this ugly gray color and tasted like dirty shoe," he gave an involuntary shudder and then looked to me. "So what are you then?" he asked, using my same question.

I shook my head and looked forward. The ocean was visible from where we sat, stretched out endlessly before us. "Well, I'm a goods' transporter – but without my boat I'm not really anything. I'm October by the way. Yuuhi October."

"Weird name," he said with a funny sounding chuckle.

I gave him a sour look, "Yours isn't any less weird. What's the "D" stand for?"

The boy, Tiki, shrugged, "Dunno – it's just there." He looked over at me and changed the subject, "What happened to your boat?"

I groaned, "Was stolen. They took it right out from under me – that's why I was stranded in the ocean in the first place. Those thugs threw me overboard and made off with the only thing I have to my name."

"Huh – today really is an unlucky day for you."

"Tell me about it," I muttered. I let out a deep breath and spurred my numbed body into movement. The muscles in my legs tried to refuse, but I ignored their complaints. I wobbled a bit, but managed to stay upright. I looked down at Tiki, who in the time frame of less than an hour had been both my savior and cause of my near-death. "Well, I had a great time almost dying with you, but my bad day's not over yet."

He cocked his head to the side, "Where ya' goin'?"

I pulled on the edge of my tank-top and flapped it around a bit to try to dry it out the rest of the way - soaring through the air had done a pretty decent job of that but it was still damp and heavy. "I'm not letting those bastards take my ship – it'll end up in a scrap yard and sold off for parts. I'm gonna go get it back."

Tiki broke out into one of his stretched smiles again, his dimples deep and very noticeable.

That smile had come to scare me.

"I'll come too!"

I stared blankly at him. "Why?"

He shrugged with a sneaky looking smirk, "Why not? S'not like I've got anything better to do."

"Well, why were you coming to this island? Don't you have a reason for coming here?" I asked. I was not too keen on the guy coming with me…in fact, I wasn't too keen on ever seeing him again. Sure I was grateful for still being alive, but not enough to want to hang around him for much longer.

"Not particularly – besides, getting your boat back sounds like a lot of fun," he leapt to his feet with an oddly graceful movement and dusted off the seat of his purple jean shorts.

I frowned at him, "Is that power of yours good for fighting?"

He shrugged, "Dunno – I've only had it for," He counted silently on his fingers for a second and then continued, "Two weeks, I think."

I sighed, "Well that's just great…"

"Don't worry – I've got a few things I want to try out, and since the last one worked out so well I bet these are just as good," Tiki laughed.

My frown deepened, "By the 'last one' you mean our nearly plummeting to our deaths?"

"We lived didn't we?"

I shook my head but gave in, "Fine – let's get going then. I have a pretty good idea where they'd take my poor ship."

He followed after me as I turned and followed the road back shoreward. I'd been on this island too many times to count, and if I knew anything about it, I knew the best place to look for ship scraps. With my old ship in constant need of repair due to bad weather and hungry Sea Kings, I was a frequent visitor to the Wreckyard. Along the eastern shallows of Boone South there was an accumulation of abandoned ships and timber scraps that were just sitting there for the taking – that is, if you were brave enough to cross paths with the petty crooks and criminals who used the area for their base of operations. More often than not I saw "business men" looking to buy or sell a suspiciously obtained vessel, and seedy people meeting up in the husks of torn up boats. It was not a nice place to go, but if someone was looking to pawn off my father's ship, the Wreckyard was where they'd take it.

I walked eastward with Tiki in tow, me with heavy, shuffling steps due to what seemed to be flaming needles embedded into my calves and Tiki sounding as if his feet weren't even touching the ground. I swear, if I couldn't see his shadow stretching out to my right I would have thought that he'd ditched me – which I actually wouldn't have minded seeing as how the strange kid was probably only going to be a hindrance if my confrontation with the ship thieves turned into a fight.

_Well_, I thought with an inner sigh, _at least I know he can send then flying pretty hard with that wind of his, or whatever it was that threw us into the air._

We followed a hard-packed dirt road as it followed the serpentine edge of the island. For a while we walked up and looked out at the ocean from atop a small cliff, but it wasn't long before we started our downward decent, the dirt road taking us back down to sea level and right towards the shallows that stretched out for a good mile or so along the shore. We could see from atop the hill the timber littered sands and waters and the old partially decayed frames of ships long run aground. There were little moving dots scattered about randomly that were the daily customers of the Wreckyard.

"If my ships anywhere, it's gotta be here," I groaned, the muscles in my legs throbbing mercilessly.

"You see it anywhere?" Tiki asked.

I scanned the deeper waters just beyond the shallows, but we were too far away for me to be able to pick out my father's ship among the many that were anchored beyond the dangerous waters. "We'll have to get closer. The ground leading out to the line of anchored ships is mostly sand and rock at the moment so we should be able to get up really close to them for now."

"What if the tide comes in?"

"We should have another hour or two before that happens. Those bastards better not have sold it already." I would have picked up my pace to a run if I could, but my legs still hurt with every step I took. I settled for a spirited walk and soon we were trudging through course, rocky sand. My temporary partner must have had thick calluses on the bottoms of his feet because he managed to walk barefooted through the rocky ground without so much as a breath of complaint. I know I wouldn't have been able to handle it – I was a terrible tenderfoot – so I was glad that I'd not ditched my sandals in my earlier swim for shore.

"So where were you coming from on that little row boat?" I asked to disrupt the silence and distract me from the sketchy looking people that watched us from their anchored boats as we walked past.

He stretched his arms out above his head and I heard his back give a few cracks in response. He released a deep breath and said, "Weeell – I'm not really sure, ya' see. About a month ago I left Hikushio –"

"What?! That far away? That's on the other side of the South Blue…" I interrupted. He was a long way from home if he was here – Boone South was a popular town for people heading towards the Grandline via Reverse Mountain. He'd come the whole length of the Grandline's first half just to get here.

"Yep – grew up looking up at the other end of the Red Line," he confirmed.

"So how'd you get so far in only a month?"

He gave a sheepish laugh and scratched the back of his neck, "Well, ya' see I kinda –"

But his explanation fell on deaf ears because my eyes spotted something that commanded my full attention. Up ahead was my father's old ship, moored just beyond the shallows. I could see it bobbing with the waves with its flags missing…my father's flags.

Despite the pain in my legs I took off at a sprint, willing the pain-signals shooting into my brain to shut up. The _Windswept Lady_ was right there in front of me – meaning those thieves who stole her were nearby.

" – an' jumped ship on the dinghy once they spotted…OI!" I heard Tiki shout after me. "Didya' find it?!"

"Yeah – Just hurry!" I shouted back to him.

I heard a sudden snicker to my right. "Ya didn't have to yell."

I looked to see Tiki running in an oddly graceful manner right at my side. Even in my rush to get nearer my father's ship I had time to be stunned at how fast he'd been able to catch up. My fatigue must have been weighing me down more than I thought because I was usually a speedy runner – for someone to catch up to me that effortlessly (because effortlessly described him perfectly with his easy-going smile and quick, quiet footsteps). I happened to glance down at his feet.

My mind must have been playing tricks on me out of exhaustion and rebellion to such strenuous activities because I could have sworn I saw his feet running on the air a few inches above the ground.

I shook the image and shock at how fast the kid was out of my head and focused on getting closer to the _Windswept Lady_. My eyes scoured the shores for the group of assailants who'd thrown me from my ship and finally I saw a familiar skunk-stripe not thirty yards ahead of us.

Yes – because while I hated to admit it, the man who'd spearheaded the attack on me looked completely ridiculous. His name was something mundane and not worth the mention because everyone knew him as Possum. He was a burly man with a large mane of black hair with a single white stripe splitting the inky black down the center, who wore a peculiar biker jacket that was much too small for his rather large and mushy body type. He was known on my home island as nothing more than a punk who had sticky fingers but in the last month or so it seems his aims have become higher than pinching beri from tip jars.

I threw an arm out to stop Tiki as I started to slow down.

Because Possum wasn't alone. On the rocky sands by a half-rotted old husk of a ship he stood with one of his partners who'd been on my ship when I'd been thrown overboard and another figure who I'd never seen before.

I crouched down behind a barrel that reeked of seaweed and old fish, and Tiki knelt down close to me. I could barely hear anything over rapid beating of my heart and my panting breaths but apparently Tiki didn't share the same problem as me.

"Sounds like they're arguing…or at least, Stripe-Guy is," he informed me.

I nodded and tried to slow both my breaths and heart beat so that I could hear.

Finally I could hear them. I couldn't yet make out their words but I could definitely hear two distinct voices. The first was Possum's raised and angry voice, while the other almost seemed to be a part of the wind it was so delicate and calm. It must have belonged to the mystery figure because none of the people Possum convened with would ever sound so dainty and quiet.

"So what's our plan?" Tiki asked me, his dimples making another appearance.

I sighed and let my breath catch up to me a little more. I shook my head, "No clue…maybe we could try to sneak our way around them and get directly to the ship. It looks like Possum's other guy might still be onboard so-"

"Pfft! His name is Possum?!"

I gave a small laugh and looked around the barrel again, "Yeah – no idea why but that's what everyone calls him." I saw Possum and the figure with the calm voice, but something heavy dropped in my stomach when I realized that the other nameless goon who always seemed to be hiding behind Possum's striped mane had disappeared from his place off to the left. I couldn't spot him anywhere.

Tiki was still laughing to himself at Possum's name when we heard a snap from behind us.

I groaned in despair over my horrible luck and turned around.

A sarcastic voice spoke inside my head. _Well, at least we found the missing crony…_

Possum's accomplice had snuck up on us while we were busy listening in on the argument and now had a slightly rusted gun barrel pointed a few feet away from my head. He scowled at me with a crooked mouth, "I thought we'd already gotten rid of you…"

I groaned again and said sarcastically, "Well, I guess both of us are turning out to have pretty lucky days then, aren't we."

His mouth twitched at me and he motioned for both me and Tiki, who was still rolling around in laughter on the rocky ground, to stand by pointing the gun barrel upwards a few times. I slowly got to my feet with my hands above my head while Tiki stumbled to his feet, clutching at his sides which I assumed were aching from all the laughing he was doing.

"Oi! Boss!" The crooked mouthed goon called out, "Look who I've found." He motioned for us to turn, and with his gun now pointed at our backs he forced us forward towards Possum and the other figure.

As we got closer I saw Possum's white stripe turn towards us as well as the blonde head of the other person who was assumedly in the process of haggling for my ship. Possum stared at the three of us as we approached and pretty much as soon as he recognized me I saw his shoulders drop and his hand come to his striped mane.

"Goddamn it, Tober. Why can't you just die?" he asked sounding more annoyed than shocked or angry at my sudden appearance. As if I was some annoying fly that couldn't figure it's way out of an open window.

I lowered my hands from above my head, "Sorry to inconvenience you – but if it makes you feel any better, I _have_ asked myself that question a few times today."

Tiki was still snickering beside me.

Possum looked to the boy having the giggle-fit and then looked back to me, "Who's this creep."

I shook my head, "Someone who can't read the situation apparently."

Tiki sighed and tried to straighten himself up. He suppressed another snicker and faced the source of his previous laughter. "I'm Rollo. We want his ship back."

This time it was Possum's turn to laugh. "Well then – good luck with that." The skunk-stripe turned to me, "Where the hell'd you find this guy, Tober?"

I just shook my head and turned towards the oddity in a beat-up straw hat beside me.

"Phew – well," Possum started after letting his laughter die out, "Nathan – kill them both. I don't want any more disturbances while I try to conduct my business."

Apparently the nameless goon wasn't actually nameless. The man with the gun to our backs replied with a stout "Yes, Boss". His gun made a clicking sound.

_What was this…the third? Fourth time I've come to my death in the past couple hours? __Please don't let the last thing I see before I die be Possum's bizarre hairstyle_, I prayed to whatever gods or spirits that might be in charge of the universe.

Suddenly there was a loud sound – but it wasn't the bang of a gun.

No, it was more of a deafening _whoosh_ and the source seemed to come from my left.

I turned to see Tiki skidding across the rocky sand, being propelled towards Possum by a loud gale of wind that seemed to be coming from his palms. He must have spun towards Nathan, the crony with the gun, and leased his strange devil-fruit power on him because the not-nameless goon was now soaring a good fifty yards away, screaming out all the while.

Tiki finally let up his attack and fell rather slowly to the ground a couple feet away from Possum, who was staring off at his disappearing peon.

My strange ally in the straw hat was grinning as he looked at his hands. "Tehee – that was pretty cool."

"A Devil-Fruit user?" An unfamiliar soft voice asked.

I looked past Possum's shocked-still outline to the other figure just beyond him. Now that I wasn't too far away, or dealing with the threat of a gun to my back I could finally get a good look at the owner of the calm and rather delicate voice I'd heard talking with an arguing Possum earlier.

My breath seemed to get caught in my chest for a split second.

Long sandy-blonde hair framed an absolutely stunning face. She didn't seem to be wearing any make-up, but her thin lips were a dusty pink color that stood out brilliantly on her slightly tanned skin. Her softly featured face came to a gentle point at the chin where she had a small cleft that looked more like a dimple. The sun seemed to be hitting her face at just the right angle because her eyes were glittering and green like the ocean. I had to shake my head in order to bring my thoughts back to the terrestrial plane.

Tiki let out a satisfied sigh after giving the girl a rather short once-over, "Yep – Kaze-Kaze Fruit if I had to give it a name."

The girl nodded, shaking some of her hair into her face. She didn't seem to mind it…in fact, she didn't seem to really mind anything. She didn't look at all startled or surprised that Tiki had just released something with the force of a cannon at a man with just his palms. She didn't even look impressed – I knew I was, despite knowing ahead of time that Tiki had that sort of capability.

Possum finally started to come out of his daze and looked at Tiki, and then at me. "Where the hell did you find this guy?" he repeated his question from earlier.

* * *

**A/n:** Well? Any good? I'm a long-time reader, first time author on the site so please tell me what you think. Yes I know it's an OC crew fic and it's been done a billion and one times before, but I'm giving it a shot.

Thanks for reading.


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